


Cuckoo And Nest

by komodobits



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, generically canonverse, miscommunication shenanigans
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-30
Updated: 2016-10-30
Packaged: 2018-08-28 00:39:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8423959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/komodobits/pseuds/komodobits
Summary: For a long time, Castiel thought that every earthly possession other than the immediately necessary was excess to requirement. But Dean – Dean who named his car, who keeps a photograph of his mother in his wallet, some thirty-plus years after her death, who still has the crumpled ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign with a sleeping pelican emblazoned on it from the Microtel outside of Roanoke where he first kissed Castiel, clumsy and unsure, under the unsteady fluorescence of an exhausted bathroom bulb – is sentimental.It puzzles Castiel, where Dean draws the line between what is meaningful and what it is worthless.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This started as "what books would Dean have in his room?" and then, in typical fashion, the thousands of words kept happening.

“Dean,” Castiel manages breathlessly, “Dean--”

 

“Yeah,” Dean says, open-mouthed against the hollow of Castiel’s throat as he moves. “God, I’m – fuck.”

 

Castiel’s fingers tighten reflexively on the back of Dean’s neck because he can hear the way that Dean’s breath is snatched ragged now, and the rhythm of Dean’s hips is stuttering out of time now, and – “I want you to,” Castiel says, feeling incoherent. “Yes, Dean. Yes.”

 

Dean’s mouth drags hot and wet along the line of Castiel’s throat, buries a kiss under his jaw, in the dip below his ear. He has one broad hand wrapped around Castiel’s thigh, and he rocks unsteadily forwards to rub his dick against the line of Castiel’s hip. There is tension in the small of his back; Castiel can trace it in his spine with his fingertips. He is so used to yearning that actually having throws him a little off-balance, leaves him breathless.

 

He wonders if he will ever adjust to the idea that this is something he can have – Dean, trembling, his broad shoulders and narrow hips, the weight of him settled between Castiel’s thighs. This skin to touch. This mouth. Dean’s teeth skate along Castiel’s throat and he arches up into Dean’s touch.

 

“Come on,” Dean says into the corner of Castiel’s mouth, “I got you. Come on--” and Castiel comes.

 

Dean is not far behind, with Castiel’s hand curled tight into his hair, with a short, shaky noise in the back of his throat. He shivers against Castiel, his hips rolling, and Castiel’s Grace – temperamental as it is, nowadays, with its tendencies to cut out and flare back like a struggling radio – feels Dean's pleasure as a hot burst of light.

 

Castiel’s hand slide down from Dean’s head to cup his biceps as he catches his breath, partially supporting him where he is shaky. He says, “Thank you,” like always – never let Dean think that Castiel in any way takes this granted, that he doesn’t let the privilege of this wash warmly over him every moment that he is allowed to be near Dean.

 

Dean scoffs. “You old sap,” he says, and he lays a kiss on Castiel which is wet and lazy and lands approximately on the corner of his mouth, and then he flops heavily down. Castiel can’t stop looking at him, caught somewhere between the green of his eyes, the scattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose, and the summer-sweet golden rush of his soul where it swells with gladness to almost fill the room.

 

Then all sense of it is gone, and Castiel swallows down disappointment.

 

He knows that sometimes his Grace can be like this – temperamental. It has changed hands so many times, been cut out and snuffed out and clumsily restored like suturing a wound with a knitting needle – it is unsurprising that sometimes the light in him gutters and will not catch.

 

It’s alright. He doesn’t need to be all angel for this. Castiel lifts himself onto one elbow and tilts over to kiss Dean, long and slow. He nudges his nose alongside Dean’s, and he says into the air between them, “We should get cleaned up.”

 

The only response he receives is a low grumble, Dean’s hands grabbing at Castiel’s hip to keep him still.

 

“Come on,” Castiel says. “It’s late.”

 

Dean groans, throws an arm over to bury his face in the crook of his elbow. “You go. My legs are broken.”

 

His legs aren’t broken, but he’s breathing ragged and still flushed red, shaky as he comes down, and so Castiel takes pity on him. He stands up, raking a hand backwards through his hair in an attempt to make it passably acceptable, should he bump into Sam in the hallway. “Pass me my clothes.” His discarded underwear is tangled at the bottom of the bed somewhere near Dean’s feet, but Dean instead rolls over onto his side and stretches for the handle of his dresser.

 

Dean comes up with a pair of folded navy boxers, and he tosses them at Castiel’s head. Castiel catches them easily, and for a moment, just holds them, perplexed by the turn of events – his boxers, clean and fresh with detergent, neatly folded in the second drawer of Dean’s dresser.

 

Dean raises an eyebrow. “You okay there?” he asks. “You taking a second to buffer, or…?”

 

“No,” Castiel says, recovering. He steps into the boxers.

 

***

 

Dean Winchester is particular about his bedroom. To Castiel, it is not terribly surprising – from what he understands of Dean's upbringing, any kind of permanence was a blessed rarity, especially permanence unshared by his brother, and now that Dean finally has a space to call his own, he is understandably fussy.

 

Truth be told, he is fastidious throughout the bunker, but elsewhere he will wrinkle his nose and come out with a withering _really? Really?_ at muddy boots tracking dirt through the hall, or Sam's feet on the living room table, or bread crumbs on the kitchen counter, and then he will demand, in no uncertain terms, that someone take care of their mess. Castiel has been on the end of Dean's irritation numerous times (“Are you serious, Cas? I scrubbed the stove literally two days ago, and what, now it's fucking melted cheese Mardi Gras? You're a slob”), but this is territory with which he is almost comfortable. Castiel takes his socks off in the war room and leaves them on the floor, and Dean tells him he's a fucking animal, and the dynamic there is clear.

 

When it comes to matters of Dean's bedroom, things are less clear-cut.

 

For example: Castiel is permitted to flick idly through Dean's battered collection of thrift-store books – Kurt Vonnegut and Ray Bradbury and Paulo Coehlo and Philip K. Dick – and to pull them out and flip through them. He doesn't even have to treat them with any reverence; he is allowed to dog-ear the pages, and once he saw Dean drop half a meatball marinara on _Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy_ without batting an eyelid. However, as soon as he puts one of the books back, tucking it neatly on the end, rather than risk bending the front page by trying to slide it back into the small space it left behind, Dean stiffens. Castiel notices – of course he does – but says nothing. He leaves to make more coffee, and when he returns, the book is back in its old space.

 

He is not allowed to move Dean's photographs, or to sit on the left side of the bed, or to put down a mug without a coaster, or to set his car-keys down anywhere, seemingly, or to do anything with his coat other than to hang it on the back of the door the instant that he is through the door. None of this is anything made explicit, but Dean has a way of turning quiet, carefully averting his eyes, and saying nothing until he has the opportunity, subtle and unseen, to restore things to the way they should be.

 

As a result of this, Castiel is careful about what he brings into Dean's room. He asks permission to plug in his phone charger beside the bed; he borrows Dean's dressing gown sometimes, on the condition that he duly returns it to its hook afterwards, and that if Dean decides he's too lazy to put jeans on, then it must be surrendered, as Dean feels exposed in his boxers without it. Castiel uses a coaster under his coffee at all times, and he is not allowed more than one mug in the room at a time; he keeps a single copy of whatever he is reading on the bedside table, and when he is done, he removes and replaces it.

 

This is why he is surprised when he comes in one day and finds that his book is gone.

 

Castiel frowns. He checks the back of the bedside table, where it might have perhaps have fallen; he checks under the bed. Down the hall, Castiel can faintly hear the steady shush of shower-water, Dean still getting washed – but Dean probably wouldn't have seen it. Castiel must have left it elsewhere.

 

He returns to his own room. There is the double bed, immaculately made up and unslept in; there is the desk, collecting a thin layer of dust; there is his stack of five books, none of them his, but rather copies he has taken from the bunker's library for ease of convenience. In the last book, Castiel's place is held by a slip of thin paper – something he had to hand. He remembers looking over at Dean, who was at his desk with his feet up, folding over pages to hold onto extracts he particularly enjoyed. Castiel went instead, into his coat pocket, and found a bus ticket. However, the one he is looking for – Borges, _Ficciones_ – is nowhere to be seen.

 

He traces slow fingers over the wall, and he goes to the closet, pulls the doors open. Inside hangs his trenchcoat and old suit. The clothes are crowded on each side by empty hangers, and at the foot of the closet are the few T-shirts that he owns, the one sweatshirt, the spare pair of jeans – all folded into an open duffel bag. It almost takes Castiel by surprise; he forgets, sometimes, that his things are down there. He doesn't check the side pocket of the bag, but he knows that one of them will contain a spare phone charger and two hundred dollars in cash. He probably wouldn't need it. It's just that last time Dean forgot to give him any money before he left.

 

Castiel imagines leaving now. Of his own free will, that is – pre-empting it. He has the bag ready to go, not wanting to repeat the agonising ten minutes it took for him to collect his things while Dean watched, remorseful but unapologetic, from the doorway.

 

He shuts the closet doors.

 

When he goes back to Dean's room, the sound of falling water down the hall has been replaced by a tuneless, echoing rendition of a song that Castiel has heard at least sixty times in the car. Castiel checks under the covers of Dean's bed, then double-backs to the war room to check in with Sam – who has only an apologetic grimace to give him, and the promise that he'll keep an eye out – and by the time Castiel has searched the TV room, Dean is back in his bedroom, his head wrapped artfully in an off-white towel.

 

“Dean,” he says. “Have you seen my book?”

 

Lifting his head, Dean says, “Hm?”

 

“My book.”

 

“Oh.” Dean palms the towel off his head, rubs a distracted hand through his damp hair. “Over on the shelf.”

 

Castiel's eyebrows lift. He glances over and, sure enough, there is _Ficciones_ tucked in between Harris and King. He isn’t sure what to say, nonplussed. He goes, as usual, for, “Thank you.”

 

***

 

Once again, Dean is angry about the kitchen. Every time it happens – and it does happen often – Castiel thinks, _I could avoid this if I cleaned up after myself_ , and yet here he is, as usual. He has his coffee, and so he could potentially try to make a swift exit, but his eyes flick to peanut-butter-smeared knife he left on the counter, the plate he dumped unceremoniously in the sink. Escape would not be in his favour.

 

“For Christ’s sake,” Dean says. “Goddamnit, I swear to--” He trails off, losing his train of thought somewhere between the scattering of toast-crumbs and the scar of butter along the counter-top, the stack of takeaway brochures on top of the microwave from every fast-food joint they’ve ever been to, the empty carton of orange juice set out by the sink like it’s guarding something.

 

Castiel sets down his coffee and crosses to the worst of the mess. “Dean, here,” he says. “Let me.”

 

Dean picks up the empty juice carton and brandishes it like a weapon. “This you?”

 

Castiel stalls. He says diplomatically, “I didn’t see who--”

 

“I’m gonna kill Sam.”

 

Feeling a lot like the last bastion of a long siege, Castiel surreptitiously moves to the sink and runs the faucet hot to wash some dishes.

 

“I just don’t get it. Why does there need to be this much goddamn junk? I mean – what is this?” Dean snatches up a folded sheet of glossy blue paper and flaps it in Castiel’s direction. “What is this?”

 

Castiel takes it with one soapy hand and studies it. “Hobarton town bulletin.”

 

“Yeah, I know – hey. Quit reading it. Junk, okay, that’s what it is. Useless goddamn junk that we don’t need.”

 

“Barbara Donnachie is feeling much better after her operation,” Castiel reads.

 

“Fucking – give it here.” Dean plucks it out of Castiel’s hand. “Point is – when were we in Hobarton? That ghoul case, that was three weeks ago.” He flaps the bulletin again. “Three weeks we’ve been hanging onto the news about Barbara Donnachie’s fucking--” he holds it still a second to peer at it. “Hip transplant. Good. Barbara got a goddamn hip transplant.”

 

Castiel says nothing; he returns to washing the dishes. He understands Dean’s annoyance with the extraneous; for a long time, Castiel thought that every earthly possession other than the immediately necessary was excess to requirement. But Dean – Dean who named his car, who keeps a photograph of his mother in his wallet, some thirty-plus years after her death, who still has the crumpled ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign with a sleeping pelican emblazoned on it from the Microtel outside of Roanoke where he first kissed Castiel, clumsy and unsure, under the unsteady fluorescence of an exhausted bathroom bulb – is sentimental.

 

It puzzles Castiel, where Dean draws the line between what is meaningful and what it is worthless.

 

He keeps out of the way as Dean goes on his rampage – aggressively throwing empty packaging and mouldy food into the garbage; sweeping crumbs from the counter; wiping coffee rings from the table; muttering to himself, _like every other goddamn day I gotta do this, swear to God_ – and goes on washing dishes. Eventually, the draining rack becomes full, mugs and plates teetering precariously. Castiel flicks suds from his hands to start carefully rearranging them to allow more room, and then, wordlessly, Dean is at Castiel’s side, dishcloth in hand, and he starts drying.

 

Dean settles his hip against the counter, tilted to almost face Castiel, and Castiel feels the crackling grit of his irritation soften, relaxing into a low, easy hum.

 

Castiel sneaks a glance at him. Dean meets his eyes. “What?”

 

“Nothing.” Castiel passes him a soapy bowl. Dean takes it, and without any further word, he shifts his weight to lean on one foot until his arm presses gently to Castiel’s, shoulder to elbow. The hush between them is comfortable, broken only by the shush of Castiel’s hands in the water, the faint squeak of Dean’s fingers over clean dishes. After a beat, Castiel says, “Sorry.”

 

Dean lifts his head, frown furrowing. “Why?”

 

Castiel tilts his head over, away from Dean. “It’s not _all_ Sam.”

 

The noise that Dean makes is somewhere between annoyed and amused. “Yeah, no shit.” He bumps Castiel with his hip. “You’re transparent as hell, you know.”

 

It’s Castiel’s turn to frown now, turning partially to face Dean. “Why am I--”

 

“Oh, come off it.” Dean drops his voice low in a weak imitation of Castiel’s voice: “ _Oh, look, now is the exact perfect time for me to finally wash these dishes, look at how tidy I am._ ”

 

“I’m being helpful,” Castiel protests.

 

Dean raises his eyebrows, but he has a smile pulling at his mouth. “You’re something.”

 

Castiel doesn’t answer. He knows as well as Dean does that his abrupt burst of productivity is only the result of feeling guilty in the wake of Dean’s aggressive cleanliness. He knows, furthermore, that the undercurrent to Dean’s _why_ was everything from _you have nothing to apologise for_ all the way to _it’s fine, I forgive you, we’re good,_ but it doesn’t change the anxious clench in Castiel’s chest. He thought he was settled here last time, in his hoodie and his bedroom and his comfortable, relaxed untidiness in making peanut butter sandwiches; he was still told to get out and find his own way. Just because Dean smiles at him and stands close by as they wash dishes together doesn’t mean that he’s secure here.

 

***

 

Castiel moves with Dean right at his shoulder. His fingers flex on his borrowed pistol, and with his Grace humming, he is hyper-aware of the working parts – the pin and spring, the hammer, the slide and barrel assembly – as he is of the waiting silver bullet, but all that won’t make him a better shot. He glances over at Dean, at his easy grip, and tries to copy.

 

“Easy, Cas.” Dean’s voice is a low murmur. “You’ve got it. You’re doing fine.”

 

It’s the first time they’ve let Castiel take the lead on a hunt – he found the pattern in the murders, hypothesising that the three girls would only have walked a new route home if they had been picked up from work by someone they knew, cross-referencing witness statements the way Sam showed him to find discrepancies, until all roads let here: an old waste processing plant outside of Higbee, the foggy October darkness and the low hum of sleeping machinery pressing in on them.

 

The shifter has gone by Jerry Deneiga, and Kaitlyn Ormerod, and once, anonymously, as a janitor at the local high school, but it always leaves a trail here, slimy and lazily concealed. Dean holds the flashlight, casting it cautiously from side to side to sweep its harsh white glare in search of further puddles of putrid skin.

 

As they walk, Dean nudges Castiel’s arm. “Where’s Sam?”

 

Castiel pauses. He has to make a conscious effort to feel the space around him, where he used to have simple mechanical awareness, back when he was ‘all the way angel’, as Sam says. He would simply appear in a room and _know._ He breathes slow, and there, two rooms away and walking slowly, there is a flicker of heat, the muted flare of a distant soul, something carbon-based wrapped around it. Castiel cocks his head, focuses. The soul is all warm colours like dusk and fissure wounds, something quiet pressing underneath. “Two rooms over.”

 

Dean makes a humming noise, satisfied. He tilts his pistol right to indicate where to go, letting Castiel continue to take point. They move together, swift and sure, weapons raised to clear every corner. There is an unsteady drip from a faucet in the far corner. There is a metal shelving unit, glinting dimly with the red glare from the illuminated fire exit sign. On the second shelf, there is a smear of wet flesh, rough at the edges as though torn uncleanly from muscle. Dean wrinkles his nose.

 

“He’s changed again,” Castiel says.

 

“Yeah.”

 

“He could be anyone.”

 

Dean is quiet. “Yeah.” He glances over. “Sam?”

 

Castiel breathes, focuses, but the sense of his surroundings he pulls back is confused. He has the golden warmth of Dean’s soul at arm’s length, and the chemical make-up of the air in his lungs, and the sharp electric hiss of the fire exit sign, buzzing unnaturally loud in his ears, and everything else is static. Castiel bites back frustration. His Grace, with its tendency to cut out and flare back at random like a struggling radio, should not be relied on like this. He should know that by now. He says, “I’m sorry.”

 

Dean touches a hand to his wrist. “It’s okay. He ain’t far.”

 

They continue, but cautiously, moving as a single unit. Always brushing arm over arm, twisting on the same pivot point to scope out a new room, back pressed to back. Castiel says, _clear,_ and then in the next long hallway, Dean says it, and they work together, two cogs in the same machine. Castiel feels, for once, as though he is good at this. Even without his Grace, perhaps he is still useful.

 

Up ahead there is a narrow metal staircase; at the foot of it are double doors leading off to the left into another series of rooms. Dean tilts his pistol towards it, makes a gesture with one hand that Castiel cannot remember the precise meaning of, but he knows it to be an indication to leave the stairs until later. He leads the way in.

 

Through the double doors is what looks like a large supply room, lined with metal shelving units, a large space left vacant in the middle for moving and sorting. Overhead, a red bulb directs them back towards the fire exit, dimly illuminating everything even with the rest of the lights powered down, so that it casts a hazy pink shadow over them.

 

As they move, there is a sound somewhere behind them – soft, but unmistakeable: a footstep.

 

Dean spins before Castiel can say anything, snaps his gun up. “Darklighter.”

 

“Red Two.”

 

Dean slackens his grip, lowers the pistol. “Red Three, dumbass. Two is Antilles.” Relief colours his griping.

 

Sam rolls his eyes. “Whatever. You found anything yet?”

 

“Some goop, so we were thinking it means he might have changed again,” Dean is saying, but then the light under Castiel’s skin flickers and flares, and he catches the sense of something on the floor below them, carbon and sunset-red and fractured, where the thing in front of them is cold.

 

Castiel pulls his gun up, barks out, “Dean--”

 

The shifter moves fast. It ducks out of Castiel’s sight-line, cracks Dean’s arm back to knock his pistol away, and then the thing in Sam’s skin slams Dean back into the brick wall hard enough that the mortar-work coughs dust. Of all things, Castiel thinks of Dean’s bad shoulder – he’s going to need ice on that – and the shifter kicks Dean’s pistol away to go skittering across the floor.

 

Castiel hesitates, his finger on the trigger.

 

He isn’t a good shot. He’s adequate at best, but that’s on a firing range, where the targets don’t move and he has Dean’s hand on his hip to hold him steady, Dean’s voice in his ear to tell him to _breathe, hold, fire_ – but here, with Dean pinned to the wall with a superhuman hand crushing his throat, Castiel doesn’t trust himself, and he is frozen.

 

He yells, “Sam?” and he lifts his pistol, squares his shoulders with feet planted wide, and he shoots out the dim red bulb above the shifter’s head – a stationary target. It explodes in a shower of sparks and red glass, useless as an offensive move, but it gets the shifter’s attention. The hand at Dean’s throat slackens, and the thing wearing Sam’s face snaps around to track Castiel with its eyes. It’s standing still now – still enough. Castiel clenches his jaw – _breathe, hold_ – and fires.

 

He goes wide, the recoil snapping the pistol back into his hand. It cracks sharply off the metal shelving unit just beside their heads. The shifter lets Dean go, lets him crumple to the concrete like wet paper, and it runs. It bows over onto all fours and moves wrongly, not quite human, its skin dripping and bones cracking into new shape as it leaps, and it reaches Dean’s fallen pistol before Castiel can shoot again.

 

Castiel snaps his own gun up – fires once, twice – but he hits the shoulder, then grazes the neck – _fuck_ – grits his teeth, tries to track the torso, misses by inches— He snaps the safety on, throws a hand up and he digs claws into his Grace. He can’t find it. He is grasping at nothing, standing still while he breathes and feels for any spark of something celestial left in him, and then a single match is lit in the hollow of his vessel. Castiel drags his Grace up underneath his skin until he crackles and sings with it, and the shifter shoots him.

 

The first bullet goes through his bicep, clean. Even with his Grace unsteady now, he is attuned enough to the workings of this body and to the way it is put together that he can feel the neat, easy slice through meat with minor damage to muscle. Surprisingly, it hurts – not badly, but enough to jolt him out of his focus, Grace waning from his fingertips as he is knocked off-balance.

 

The second bullets hits his hipbone and ricochets. After that, he loses track of the bullet in his body.

 

All he knows is that pain blooms hotly in his gut and that his hands are dark with blood and that Dean makes a noise, a yell with teeth in it, as Castiel’s legs go out beneath him and hits the concrete. He can’t quite see straight, but he can see enough as the shifter turns his attention to Dean, where he cringes, curled and wheezing, against the floor. Castiel sees the pistol lift again, the steady hands on the grip – steadier than Castiel’s have ever been – and fear makes him reckless.

 

He hauls himself up onto one elbow, Grace shuddering and snapping in his chest, and through a bloody mouth, he grits out, “Dean, shut your--” and he bursts into light.

 

***

 

Castiel struggles back to consciousness as though underwater – dragging himself from heaviness, from a place where he can’t quite breathe and his ears are plugged with echoes. He finds his way back to his body, and for a moment he floats, as though his Grace and Jimmy Novak’s empty shell are overlapping at the edges but not quite lined up straight, and then the pain radiating numbly from his gut and arm brings him back to a perfect centre. Distantly, he remembers slurring an apology for bleeding on the Impala’s upholstery; he remembers the white of Dean’s knuckles on the wheel.

 

He opens his eyes.

 

The hospital room is painted an ugly off-yellow colour. There is a curtain not pulled all the way around the bed; in the hallway beyond the half-open door, two nurses are arguing in an undertone. Sam is half-slouched in a plastic chair, chin propped on fist, somewhere between sleep and detached interest in whatever brightly-lit infomercial is humming from a TV in the corner. Dean is nowhere in sight.

 

Castiel mumbles out a bleary noise, and Sam’s head lifts.

 

“Cas? You awake?” He gets up and crosses to stand hesitantly beside him. “Hey. You doing okay?”

 

Castiel feels like shit. He says, “You should see the other guy.” He heard Dean say it once, when a crocotta beat him blue and bloody. It makes Sam smile. Castiel struggles into an upright position, Sam rushing forwards with a hand on his waist and a hand on his shoulder to ease him forwards, and as Castiel blinks at the room spinning, he says, “What happened?”

 

“Uh, you got shot. Twice, actually.” Sam’s mouth grimaces as he arranges pillows behind Castiel’s shoulders. “You weren’t healing properly – the bullet didn’t come out, so that might be why, but you weren’t looking good, and Dean was – well. He’ll be glad to hear you’re okay.”

 

“And you – the shifter--”

 

“Yeah, it got the drop on me.” Sam has a bruise blossoming darkly on one temple. He hesitates visibly, his mouth twisting, and Castiel watches him debate his next sentence before he says it. “It’s a little embarrassing, actually. I haven’t told Dean this, but… I was, uh.” He scratches the back of his neck. “I was tying my shoe, so.”

 

Castiel half-smiles, sinking back against the pillows. “What did you tell Dean?”

 

Sam grins. “Hand to hand combat. He was too fast for me.”

 

“I’m sorry, Sam,” Castiel says, and he watches the smile slip from Sam’s face. “I was supposed to be keeping track of you.”

 

Sam shakes his head. “No way, Cas. Not your fault.”

 

Castiel appreciates Sam’s attempt to make him feel better, even though he knows the truth – he let them down. He should have been watching. He should have been more careful. He exhales, deflating, and he says, “And Dean, then – he’s okay?”

 

“I told him to take a walk. He was, uh – fretting.” Sam’s mouth curves into a smile. “He frightened some of the nurses. But he’s okay. You didn’t blind him, if that’s what you’re worried about. He says he’s gonna invest in some good sunglasses, though.”

 

As if on cue, Dean appears in the doorway, then – haggard, dark-eyed – and then he looks at Castiel and everything is swept away in the face of the knee-buckling relief that settles in his expression. He is at Castiel’s side in four steps. “Cas,” he says, “Cas,” and he gets one of Castiel’s hands in both of his and he holds on tight.

 

“Hi,” Castiel says. “You’re safe.”

 

“Oh, yeah. Safe’s my middle name.”

 

Behind them, Sam snorts. “Sure. Right – it's your turn, Dean. I gotta go get some coffee or I'm gonna end up keeling over into a potted plant. You got him?”

 

Dean’s eyes don’t leave Castiel’s face. “Yeah,” he says. “I got him.”

 

Sam slaps a hand to Dean's shoulder as he passes, and he stifles a yawn into his knuckles on his way out into the hallway. The chair that he vacated looks uncomfortable but inviting enough; Dean ignores it and settles carefully on the edge of the bed.

 

“Hey,” he says. His fingers rub a reassuring rhythm over the back of Castiel's knuckles. “You look like shit, buddy.”

 

Castiel reaches across to brush his thumb over the swell of Dean’s cheek, the bags beneath his eyes. The movement sets off a sharp flash of pain through his side, but it's worth it for the way that Dean's head tilts to push his face into Castiel's touch. “You look tired.”

 

“Yeah, well, I didn’t want to, uh--” Dean swallows, clears his throat. “They had to put you in surgery, so. I wanted to be here.” He bursts out with a half-laugh which is equal parts genuine to nervous. “Which reminds me – if anyone asks, your name is Harrison Fisher, and you’re a high-flying defence attorney who can afford surgery.”

 

“And you are?”

 

Dean hides a smile against Castiel’s knuckles. “A gold-digger. Obviously.”

 

Castiel looks at him – at the tilt of his golden-warm smile, the creases that kiss the corners of his eyes, the relief all through his expression that renders him impossibly soft, the harsh white light of the overhead fluorescence washing him out pale as though in watercolours – and tries to imagine never seeing this face again. He says, “I thought you were going to die.”

 

Dean's smile fades.

 

Castiel means to clarify, to explain his ebbing confidence in his own power, the certainty that his Grace would fizzle out and he would be left curled on the floor watching the next bullet crack through Dean's forehead. He says again, “I thought you were going to die,” and Dean's hands move from where they are curled around Castiel's to cradle his jaw.

 

“Hey. It's okay.” Dean's thumb rubs carefully over the edge of Castiel's jaw. “I'm fine, look. Ten fingers, ten toes. All intact.”

 

“I didn’t recognise it wasn’t Sam. My Grace cut out, and I couldn’t tell--”

 

“Dude, it’s fine,” Dean interrupts, more firmly now. His fingers on Castiel's face tighten a little, and he holds Castiel's eyes. “You hear me? I couldn’t tell it wasn’t him either, okay, and I raised the kid. It’s fine. Seriously.”

 

Castiel's mouth is cotton-dry, pain thrumming beneath his skin with every breath, and he can feel his Grace bubble unevenly within him as though it can't make up its mind about whether to be useful.The morphine is too thick in Castiel's system for him to argue, but he knows the truth. It was only pure blind luck that Dean isn't dead. Next time – and there will inevitably, always, be a next time – he will face whatever violence is coming with the knowledge that there is nothing he can do to keep the Winchesters safe. He has been called an attack dog, a guardian angel, but here is the truth: he is deadweight.

 

***

 

From there, his Grace comes and goes like the turn of the tide. During hour three of the drive back to Lebanon, curled up under Dean’s jacket in the back-seat, he is overwhelmed by a flash-flood of cold white light as his Grace burrows into his bicep, knitting muscle and tendons and ligament back together. He hisses between his teeth, trying to control it, to ease the sudden rush, and for a moment he is concerned about accidentally blowing up the car, but then it is gone, and he sags back against the upholstery.

 

“You okay back there?” Dean’s voice is tight, worried.

 

There is a coppery taste between Castiel’s teeth, something like blood and ash. “Fine.”

 

Sam turns to look over the back of the bench-seat. “You don’t look too good,” he says. “We can stop, if you want. Get you something to eat?”

 

Castiel wants to say, _no – just take me home_ , but he knows not to be so presumptuous. He turns his face into the leather and he breathes. He curls his hands into fists tight enough that his fingernails bite into his palms.

 

He is somewhere between consciouness and sleep for the last sixty miles or so, and then the next thing he knows is that he is disturbed by Dean palming over his calf. He stirs, trying to focus through the morphine fog, on Dean where he is framed by the Impala's door as he leans in.

 

“Heya,” he says. He tugs gently on Castiel's shoe-lace. “Come on, man. We're here.”

 

Dean eases him out, lets him sling an arm around Dean's neck, and helps him down into the bunker. There is Sam, on his other side, an arm carefully around Castiel's waist to support him down the long metal staircase.

 

“Hold on, Cas, hold on, we’ve got you,” Sam is saying, over and over, and Castiel can already feel blood leaking through his bandages. He says nothing, and lets himself be blindly steered.

 

At last, Dean's voice in Castiel's ear, low and reassuring: “Okay, here we go. You’re doing great, you’re almost there.”

 

Castiel collapses gratefully onto the bed. The pain hits him in dull pulses, curling and uncurling in his gut. He breathes around the sharp ache, eyes up on the ceiling, and so it takes him a moment to realise where he is.

 

“Dean,” he says, his eyes tracking over the weapons arranged carefully on the wall, the curled AC/DC poster that Dean found in a thrift store. “This is your room.”

 

“Well, yeah.” Dean’s tone falls close to how Castiel imagines he might respond if he had speculated that the Impala might be a car. “How else am I supposed to keep an eye on you?”

 

“My room is ten feet down the hall.”

 

“Then I gotta move into your room. And to be honest, Cas, your room’s not all that homey.”

 

Castiel frowns. He has a few books that he took from the bunker's library – in a stack, admittedly, on the desk – and a single gloxinia that Sam keeps telling him he’s overwatering-- “My gloxinia.”

 

“Gesundheit.”

 

“My plant, Dean. I need to water it.”

 

“Yeah, yeah. I’ll keep an eye on it. You stay put.”

 

It isn’t hard for Castiel to acquiesce; his vision is already somewhat fuzzy at the corners. He dozed in the back of the Impala, but there wasn’t room to spread out and the seat-belt was digging into his side; now, all his exhaustion catches up to him and all he wants to do is sleep.

 

From then, Castiel exists in a medicated blur, catching only fractured moments of consciousness – Dean easing Castiel’s boots off; grunting, _here_ , and tossing a tartan throw over him; sweeping Castiel’s hair back off his forehead. He is beside Castiel, then, curled at the edges of where Castiel inelegantly splays himself, his socked foot hooked around Castiel’s ankle.

 

Castiel blinks at him, groggy. “Dean,” he says.

 

“Yeah.” Dean yawns, his face scrunching, and Castiel recognises distantly that Dean has been awake longer than Castiel has – stayed vigilant throughout his stay in hospital, drove five hours back from Columbia in the rain.

 

Castiel wants to kiss Dean, but he’s tired. He finds energy enough to reach a hand across to sweep his fingertips carefully across the apple of Dean’s cheek, the edge of his jaw. He murmurs, “Thank you.”

 

Dean tilts his face into Castiel’s hand. “For what?”

 

Castiel can’t find the words for it. The morphine is making his brain foggy, and he is so tired. His head swims with Enochian, with Arabic, with Tagalog and Greek and Portuguese. Human speech is all the same. Human languages, he supposes as he starts to drift and haze, are somewhat interchangeable. Dean will understand. _Za to, že jsi mě nechal zůstat,_ he says first, and Dean is staring at him, _Που με άφησες ν μεινωin_ , and the last thing pinning Castiel halfheartedly to conscious like a half-living butterfly to a corkboard is Dean’s hand. Dean’s fingers through his, thumb over his knuckles. _For letting me stay._

 

***

 

“—wouldn’t mind some beer, but I don’t think I’m allowed,” Dean is saying, voice low and matter-of-fact, somewhere nearby. “Trust me – if you were mine, I’d have you on a diet of Budweiser, but as it is…”

 

Castiel blinks awake, disoriented, and his eyes slowly focus to find Dean sat at his desk, a mug of coffee cradled in two hands, talking to a plant.

 

“Anyway, if I’m going by anything Sam says, you’re drinking too much already. Need to dry up. Get you to some Plants Anonymous, or at least get Cas to stop drowning you.” Dean reaches out with gentle fingers to poke at a couple leafs, rubbing his fingers over the wilting green. “You look like I feel.”

 

“The gloxinia looks fine,” Castiel interrupts, his voice a hoarse croak, and Dean’s head snaps up.

 

“Morning, sunshine.” He has a flush of colour up from his jaw. He’s embarrassed, Castiel realises – he doesn’t need to be able to see Dean’s soul for that. He’s getting better at picking up on physical cues. “I’m leaving you for your plant.”

 

Castiel frowns. “What’s it doing in here?”

 

“Couldn’t be bothered to keep getting up and walking out to check on it.” Dean doesn’t meet Castiel’s eyes as he speaks. Castiel notices, but he can’t quite figure it out – sometimes it’s shame, or a lie, or awkwardness, and none of those seem right.

 

“You only need to check on it once a day,” Castiel says.

 

Dean shrugs. “This seemed easier.”

 

With his breath hissed between his teeth, Castiel struggles up onto his elbows. Dean sets his coffee down, stands, and comes to his aid, tucking a hand between his shoulder-blades to ease him up into a sitting position. His hand slips from there down to the small of Castiel's back, and almost before Castiel is cogent enough to understand what is happening, he is curled into Dean's side, his face pressed to Dean's shoulder.

 

“Hi,” Dean says. He eases himself down onto the bed beside Castiel, supporting him. “How're you holding up?”

 

Castiel doesn't answer. He says instead, “That’s my shirt.”

 

Dean says, “Uh.” He looks down, and plucks at the fabric, for all appearances nonplussed, but there is a tell-tale colour rising on his jaw. “Is it?”

 

Castiel owns only three T-shirts – a dark blue one; a soft grey one with long sleeves, and a white T-shirt that Dean bought him that reads, in large black print, _ASK ME FOR DIRECTIONS TO THE GUN SHOW,_ a declaration that Castiel doesn’t understand but which makes Dean laugh, so naturally it is his favourite. It is this shirt that Dean wears now, which pulls too tight across his broader shoulders. “Yes,” he says.

 

“It was in my drawer,” Dean says defensively.

 

In his drawer – just as Castiel’s boxers were in his drawer, and just as Castiel’s phone charger keeps going missing and then being found plugged into the wall beside Dean’s desk. Castiel isn’t an idiot. He knows what is happening, but it curls cold fingers beneath his ribs and finds a home there in a way that makes him prickly and uncomfortable. He pulls away.

 

“Cas?”

 

“I need the bathroom,” he says. It is, he has discovered, the only excuse that will exempt him from further questions, and it works now. Dean uses the arm behind Castiel's back to ease up upright, and he helps him onto his feet, his hands steady and gentle as Castiel winces.

 

“You gonna be okay to--”

 

“I'm fine.” Castiel moves away from Dean's worrying hands, and he takes slow, tentative steps to keep from aggravating his stitches.

 

At first, it is a low ache, the morphine still flirting at his nervous system, but by the time, he reaches the bathroom, it has built to a sharp pain all through one side that makes his fingers curl and his teeth fizz. He can barely keep standing, and so he falls heavily to sit on the edge of the tub, grasping at the towel holder for support.

 

Soon Sam and Dean will realise the extent to which Castiel's failing Grace is more hindrance than help, and they will have no need of him on hunts, which in turn will mean no need of him anywhere. He can't fight; he can't shoot; he can't even cook. He is waiting, as Sam would say, for the other shoe to drop.

 

***

 

It takes Castiel too long to heal. Even with the unreliable bursts of Grace that flash through him to leave him feverish and shaky, muscle and tissue is slow to knit back together, and the pain lingers long after the wound itself is pulled into a pinkly puckered scar.

 

Dean won't let Castiel move back into his own room for his bed-rest – adamant that medical bed-rest needs to be supervised, that Castiel shouldn't be on his own in case anything happens – and it is grating on both of them. In the early stages, when the injury was still fresh and warrant to seeping through bandages, he bled through his clothes and ruined no less than two sets of bedding.

 

 _It's fine, it's fine,_ became a kind of mantra in Dean's mouth. The bedding: _it's fine, I gotta get some new sheets anyway._ The four mugs of half-drunk coffee on Dean's bedside table, Castiel too drained and exhausted to walk them back to the kitchen: _it's fine, I got 'em._ Castiel's jeans and shirt folded over the back of Dean's chair while he lies around in sweatpants: _they're not hurting anyone here, it's fine._ To Castiel, he is watching the slow spread of his accumulated clutter like the insidious creep of mildew. He feels it press in on him until it is choking at the base of his throat, coldly anxious and relentless.

 

The worst part, Castiel thinks, as he lies awake that night, is that he can tell it's not fine. He doesn't think Dean is lying outright, but he won't disregard Dean's tendency to gloss over problems, his preference to _keep trucking_ , as it were, and pray that things even out. In his head, Castiel replays Dean's fidgeting hands, his tapping fingers, the way he would pick Castiel's stuff just to move it an inch or so to the left or right – wanting to be rid of it, not wanting to say so. And then:

 

_I can take it. Let me--_

 

_No, it's fine. It's fine. It's just a jacket, Cas, come on. It's fine._

 

Dean is curled up, asleep, beside Castiel. He has one arm wrapped around Castiel's waist, his hand fisted into Castiel's shirt; his face is pressed into Castiel's shoulder, his slack mouth faintly damp. Castiel lies on his back, his fingers picking distractedly at a raw thread from the hem of his shirt. At his side, Dean's breath hitches, a snore almost catching him by surprise. His soul is a low and steady, relaxing hum, amber-warm and lazily reflecting light like glass prisms. Humans are bad at articulating love, Castiel knows. He is strung somewhere between humanity and holiness, and he is no better at it. All he knows is that he has lived six millenia, sculpted cathedrals and sung in praise, seen tundra and prairie and sunset, and it dwindles into insignificance against the light of Dean's smile.

 

Castiel rolls away from Dean and he struggles to his feet, one hand braced against the wall by the headboard. The pain in his side and hip is a dull ache – keeping him awake as much as the whirlpooling in his head – but he has faced worse before. He slips out through Dean's door. He heads down the hallway.

 

At the door to his room, he feels for the light-switch, and he looks in. He looks at the untouched bed, the empty surfaces. There are hooks on the wall for mounting pictures, but the walls are bare. There is a single postcard on the desk – from Claire and Alex, on a hiking vacation in Montana – which was propped against the empty pen-pot, but which has since slipped to lie face-down. Castiel crosses to it, props it up neatly again. It leaves behind a neat rectangle in the dust.

 

He goes, then, to the closet. Unsteadily, he sets a hand on the wall to support himself through the pain prickling all along his injured side, and he lowers himself to sit cross-legged. He unzips the duffel, carefully turns over the contents: there are his clothes; there is his charger; there are his emergency two hundred dollars. He counts the bills, slowly, carefully.

 

The more comfortable Castiel gets, the worse it always is when he is made to leave again.

 

***

 

The final straw is a cold cup of coffee.

 

Castiel sits at Dean's desk, cross-referencing three reports on victims of an alleged cougar attack in Malott, Washington, with the mug at his elbow, while Dean sprawls behind him on the bed as he reads through the potential lore on seasonal changes in werewolf behaviour. The death of Sarah Menzies was the result of an attack on a full-moon, but witnesses last saw her leaving with a strange, but very human, man; on the other hand, Jay Luczak was mauled by some kind of animal on a new moon in early February. Castiel flips between Legrice and Luczak, and reaches for Elena Machado to check whether the autopsies were performed by the same coroner, and he knocks the coffee over.

 

“Fuck,” Castiel says, jerking back in his seat, and Dean jumps up from the bed, but it's too late. Coffee is flooding over the desk, and it has already soaked into all Castiel's reports, into the medical paperwork that Dean printed out from the Three Rivers Hospital, into Dean's dog-eared copy of _The Shadow of the Wind_ , and a puddle is now collecting on and around Dean's cell phone. “Fuck.”

 

“Aw, shit,” Dean says, noticing the same, and he lunges forwards to snatch up the phone. “No, no, no – come on.” Castiel doesn't look at him, but he can feel everything Dean's soul is brimming with – the prickling of his annoyance, the thick, heavy touch of his despair, like cooling grease, as he swipes at the screen – and then Dean is backing away. “Goddamnit. Hang on, I'm gonna grab a bag of rice.”

 

The door swings behind him, bumping gently against the wall, and Castiel is left with a lapful of cold coffee and a desk covered in things he has ruined. He carefully picks up the reports, trying to shake off the worst of the coffee, but then he is flicking spots of it onto the fucking wall, and – shit – onto Dean's photo of his mother. He balls up the reports, crumpling them viciously in one hand, and he throws them into the wastepaper basket.

 

Anger rises, hot and sharp, in his throat, and he is ungentle as he wipes Dean's photograph clean with his sleeve, and then – fuck it – he yanks his sweatshirt off over his head, uncaring of the way the movement flares white-hot pain up one side from his still-healing bullet wound – _fuck it –_ and he uses his own sweatshirt to wipe up the coffee. He rubs roughly at the wood until it is dry, and it's still sticky but for now he doesn't care. He gathers his wet sweatshirt into his arms, and with it he gathers his jacket from where it is slung over the back of Dean's shirt, his shirt from the foot of Dean's bed, his boxers and dirty sicks and towel and book from the floor. He needs to get out. He can't be here a second longer.

 

Castiel feels the return of Dean's presence before he speaks – the sharp crackle of his surprise, the slow grey swirl of his confusion. “Cas?” he says. “What's going on?”

 

Castiel tries to add his towel to the pile in his arms and drops a shirt in the process. He stoops with a grunt, pain searing anew through his hip and waist, to retrieve it. “Nothing,” he mutters. “I'm removing my things.”

 

Dean is slow to come in, wary. He has in one hand the bag of rice with his phone poking out of the top; he moves to set it down on the desk, but then eyes the tacky brown stain left on the wood by the hastily mopped-up coffee, and seems to think better of it; he puts it down on the floor by the door. “Why?”

 

“You need more space. My belongings are everywhere and--”

 

“Dude, it was an accident, don't worry about it. If anything, it's my fault. Desk's giant – and I had to go put the mug down right by your elbow, so.”

 

Dean's fault – it's ridiculous to the point of being laughable. “No.”

 

“Cas, you ever heard of not crying over spilled milk? Because--”

 

“It isn't milk. And I'm not crying,” Castiel says flatly. He can't believe Dean is trying to gloss this over – when Castiel has seen him agitatedly straightening his books, wiping up coffee ring after coffee ring, retrieving Castiel's clothes from the floor and making neat piles. By Dean's standards, the room has been trashed, and he isn't doing anything to stand up for himself. “I recognise that you like things to be tidy and organised, and the imposition of my belongings is negatively affecting your--”

 

“You're not negatively affecting shit, Cas. Cas – stop.” Dean reaches for him, but Castiel steps away, out of reach, to cross to the desk – Dean's sticky, coffee-stained desk – and retrieve his houseplant. Castiel pretends not to notice that this is the greenest and healthiest it's ever looked. “Cas, will you just--?”

 

Castiel balances the gloxinia carefully in the crook of his elbow, tucked alongside the pile in his arms. “I apologise,” he says. “I should have done this a long time ago.”

 

Dean is silent for a moment. When he speaks, his voice is quiet. “You really been that desperate not to stick around?”

 

Castiel looks at him, uncomprehending. Dean's hands are loose at his sides, his voice toneless, and at the moment when he is most in need of clues from the shape and colour of Dean's soul, Castiel feels his Grace fizz and fade, and Castiel cannot read him.

 

“Jesus.” Dean turns his head to stare away at the wall, his jaw working. He breathes, his mouth a tight, flat line, and then he shakes his head, bites out, “Fine. You got your excuse now so – forget it. Take your stuff. Take it all.” He points at the dresser. “You got some socks in there you'll wanna take, too, if we're totally clearing out here. And you can take your fucking shitty deodorant.”

 

“Dean--”

 

“Hey, don't let me keep you.” Dean takes a step back, rubs a hand down over his mouth. The slope of Dean's shoulders, the line of his jaw, is pulled tense, every muscle locked tense, and Castiel doesn't need to feel for the shifting light of Dean's soul to know that he's upset. “You got somewhere better to be, right?”

 

Castiel stares at him, something soft and aching behind his ribs.“I want to be where you are.”

 

Dean laughs, the sound of it bitter and alien in his mouth. “Yeah, sure. That's why you've been here three months and you haven't so much as unpacked your goddamn duffel bag.”

 

Castiel can't find the words to explain. He is standing frozen in the middle of Dean's room, his arms full of everything he has been littering Dean's room with, and Dean is angry. Castiel doesn't understand it. He says, “I don't belong here.”

 

“Like hell you don't. You know, I've heard some real shitty excuses before, but that's weak, Cas, that's some bullshit--”

 

“I'm just fitting around the edges in whatever room you'll allow me,” Castiel starts. “Dean, my room is empty anyway--”

 

“That's because you don't live in that room, you idiot,” Dean cuts over him, raising his voice. “You live in here. With me. Or at least, you would, if you would stop fucking around and just--”

 

“Dean--”

 

“I want you to stay,” Dean snaps. “I don't how to make that any goddamn clearer for you. Stay here. Stay with me. Just – fucking – stay, alright?” His voice cracks, and if anything, his own voice failing seems to make him angrier. “Stay.”

 

“Dean, I--” he starts haltingly. He doesn't know what to say. “You’ve never had a home before. A real home. A room you can clean and decorate and live comfortably in. This is so precious to you, and this...” He looks down at the bundle in his arms. “This is junk.”

 

Castiel understands that he is embellishment, at best. Nothing sedentary. He is no real part of this room or this life, but if he is careful and unobstructive and small, and if Dean is feeling accommodating, then Castiel can fit in around the edges and pretend. Castiel is grateful for this – for any opportunity to live alongside Dean’s life – but he isn’t living alongside him here. He’s in the way.

 

The rise and fall of Dean's shoulders is steady in the long moment for which he is silent. He breathes, and he looks at Castiel with his jaw set hard and something unflinching in his gaze, and then quietly, he says, “You are not junk.”

 

Castiel is caught off-guard. “What?”

 

Before Castiel knows what is happening, Dean has crossed to meet him in three strides, and he starts taking things from Castiel's arms. “This,” he says, picking up the plant-pot, “and this – this,” and he is grabbing handfuls of Castiel's shirts and research, “this – your books, and your three hundred mouldy coffee mugs, and your – your gloxino--”

 

Castiel corrects him automatically. “Gloxinia.”

 

“—all of it – that’s you.” Dean's voice is stronger now, firmer, and he dumps Castiel's stuff on his ruined desk, dirty laundry and all. He jostles three of his books out of place; he knocks over one of his photographs. He doesn't seem to notice. “This here, Cas, this is you, and you are not junk.”

 

Sometimes Castiel forgets how it is to be human, to feel. He forgets the intensity of it. The devastating rush of everything that hits him now leaves his throat tight, his heart a crushing lead weight. He doesn't believe him; he doesn't understand. All he can say is, “You've been unhappy.”

 

“Because you've been waiting to leave for weeks,” Dean bursts out. “Every goddamn day, you've been just waiting to bail on me, and I didn't want me picking at you about your fucking dirty socks to be the thing that makes you walk out again!”

 

Castiel's breath snags in his chest. He swallows. He says, “You want me to stay.”

 

“Yeah, dumbass. I want you to stay.” Dean gestures loosely at the room. “With me, you know. In here. Like... I want you to have a drawer. I want you to hang your coat on the back of the door, I want you to – Jesus, leave your muddy shoes all over the floor if that's what having you here means.”

 

Castiel squints. “You'd accept my muddy shoes?”

 

Dean snorts. “Well, I wouldn't accept it – I'd tell you that you're a fuckin' animal and make you clean up your shit,” he says, eyebrows raised. “But that doesn't make it a goddamn curtain call, okay? You're a slob and it bugs me, but it doesn't mean I don't still love you, Christ.”

 

Castiel becomes still. He says, “You--?”

 

Dean seems to realise what he has said, and a hot flush rises on his jaw and ears. He shifts his weight from one foot to the other, rolls his eyes. “Come on,” he mutters, avoiding Castiel's eyes. “You knew that.”

 

Castiel doesn't plan the way that his voice comes out soft, awed: “No. I didn't.”

 

“Okay.” Dean pushes his hands into the pockets of his jeans. He still won't look at Castiel. “Well. There you have it.”

 

“Dean,” Castiel says.

 

“Dude, you don't have to--”

 

Castiel steps up into Dean's space. He lifts a hand to Dean's face, sweeps his thumb over the edge of his jaw, curls his fingers under to cup his face in his palm. “Dean,” he says again, low and earnest. “In the time I've known you, I have made mistakes that have taken me away from you, but I will never again leave you of my own volition. As long as you'll have me, I'm yours.”

 

The heat of Dean's embarrassment is tangible to the touch, his ears colouring; his mouth half-lifts in a faint smile, and he finally meets Castiel's eyes. He is warm and shy and pleased, relief easing through his shoulders and relaxing his arms, and Castiel's failing Grace can't feel for Dean's soul, but he feels it nonetheless, a golden-sweet pressure in the air that makes his skin sing.

 

“You know,” Dean says weakly, his hands still awkwardly in his pockets, “most folks just go for a standard _love you too_ kind of thing.”

 

“I love you, too,” Castiel amends, and he kisses Dean breathless.

 

***

 

“You know, my true form as it exists when not limited by human perception primarily consisted of coloured wave-lengths,” Castiel reminds Dean, for what feels like the tenth time. It seems to him that the choices here in Target are near-boundless, but Dean seems to averse to taking Castiel's opinions on bedding into consideration.

 

Dean doesn't even look over at him. “Okay, so when we're getting infra-red pillows, I'll let you get involved.”

 

It was only last week that Castiel was officially deemed well enough by the Winchesters to go on another hunt, but the attacks in Malott turned out to be a dead-end, and Dean, on the way home, wanted to swing into Target. _Someone,_ he had said, with a pointed look at Castiel in the rear-view mirror as he parked, _was mortally wounded in my bed and bled everywhere._ Now, Castiel huffs, and he moves to stand by Dean's side in perusing the shelves of neatly packaging bedding, laid out in pinstripes and polka-dots and floral yellow patterning – the latter of which Castiel has already discovered is a resounding _no_ from Dean. “I don't see what's wrong with the gold--”

 

“Maybe when we open a brothel we can get gold satin bed-sheets, alright?” Dean says, rolling his eyes. “For now, though--”

 

“I was told it'll reflect the light and make the room brighter, so--”

 

Dean looks at him, incredulous. “By who?”

 

“Sam.”

 

Dean drags a hand down over his face and groans out loud. “Oh, okay, so now I'm getting the full picture,” he says, and he half-laughs. “Sam told you we oughta get gold satin bedsheets. Right. He tell you about leopard-print, too?”

 

Castiel frowns at him. “No. Should we ask a member of staff if they have that?”

 

The laugh that Dean gives at that is inelegnatly loud, snorting a little at the end, and he slings an arm around Castiel's neck. “God, no,” he says, his voice warm and fond, and Castiel leans into his side. “Come on, then, Ruby Rhod. We'll get a normal colour, and you can pick some fuck-ugly cushions. Deal?”

 

“Are you sure?” Castiel asks, pulling away far enough to look at him.

 

Dean shrugs. “It's your home, dude. Whatever floats your boat.”

 

“Even if I still want the--”

 

“Even if you still want the one with flowers,” Dean recites, although with decided reluctance. He shakes his head. “Yeah, why not. Knock yourself out.”

 

Castiel slips his arm around Dean's waist, his thumb rubbing circles over Dean's hip, and he doesn't kiss Dean here, but he tilts his head against his shoulder. He smiles at him. With a roll of his eyes, Dean gently hip-checks him towards the shelves so that he can pick out accessories – something extra, but valued – for a place of his own.

 


End file.
